Van der Graaf Generator / Peter Hammill S& D, C or D?

Troll Throuple

I get what you're saying but I think you have to separate queerness from sexuality somehow, because prog music is pretty nonsexual as a whole to me. and when it does get horny it always comes off very weird. imo "Ladies of the Road" is worse than just a filler track, it almost ruins the band's entire image (though tbf Crimson was kind of falling apart there anyway). its not just a sex thing either, when prog bands sing about any sort of normal thing (see Triumvirat's concept album about getting laid off at the factory) it just comes off strange to me

there is a modern prog band called The Tangent that sorta pulls it off though, mainly because you just know the dude is an IT worker doing this in his spare time

― frogbs

King Crimson's image is really interesting to me! I think they're a very... like not musically complex, but _personally_ complex band. The image of King Crimson often doesn't accord with the reality. That's what I found so fascinating about the recent King Crimson documentary. It really delves into that.

This idea of King Crimson as this non-sexual, intellectual, cerebral band is, as far as I can tell, completely divorced from the reality. The impression I get from Fripp's statements about this period is that he was pretty much a huge slut. "Ladies of the Road" isn't even their first paean to groupies - "Cadence and Cascade" is also on that theme. In the "Larks' Tongues in Aspic" period there were a fair few references to analingus, as well.

I definitely do... I mean I don't differentiate queerness from sexuality in an _absolute_ sense. My gender identity isn't the same thing as my sexual identity. (My sexual identity is one that I've seen described as "WTFSexual", as in "What even is sex?" I'm not asking that ironically. I genuinely do not know what "sex" is supposed to be.)

I guess when I talk about queerness and the lack thereof I look at it kind of along the same lines as Natalie Reed's "Null HypotheCis". The default reading for me of prog isn't asexual or non-gendered. It's cisgender, heterosexual music, whether it's _explicitly_ sexual or not. There are a lot of implicit assumptions in there, things that aren't even noticeable to cishets but just don't track with my own experience and understanding. I mean, look, I don't want to get too sociologist here, but the music of, say, Magma, which is propulsive, repetitive music that drives towards an explosive finale... I'll just say that it _parallels_ normative cis male sexuality. I understand the appeal of that kind of sex. It's not the way I do things. That's not to say that Magma's music is explicitly sexual music or that music is all about sex or whatever whatever. There's just a level of resonance with cis male sexuality that's just _there_, it's congruent in a way where the presence or absence of congruence isn't even a question. And to me, I feel that incongruence pretty strongly.

A lot of what I like about prog rock is what I've seen referred to as "padding", as being "aimless". King Crimson talks of their name being evocative of a "man with an aim". I'm a woman and to the extent that I have an aim, it's mostly to live in and embody the moment. (Which, actually, is King Crimson's aim too... we get along a lot better than the name might suggest!)

Prog rock songs can be very long and while they do tend to eventually get where they're going, it's a long, often scenic trip. They don't get in and out within two minutes. Which, again, I'm not condemning. I think that's pretty cool, having that quick hardcore blast of energy. When I think about myself, how I express myself, that's not how I do things. If I arrive at a conclusion at all, it's almost by accident. That's the feeling I get from my favorite prog - oh, that actually makes sense? I didn't expect that to make sense, I thought we were just wandering around aimlessly. When I do stuff that's... _maybe_ sex? Anyway, that's kind of how I go about things. I'm very fond of the "fuck around and find out" approach.

And there's a sort of tension between that sort of structural _queerness_ I find in prog with the way so much of it is cishet coded. That's kind of what I mean when I talk about music not being queer, I don't necessarily mean explicitly, I mean sometimes people's queerness informs their work, the way cishet people's cishet-ness informs their work. Honestly maybe that's why Palmer's album disappointed me... it's missing any kind of implicit sense of gender or sexual identity whatsoever. It's just kind of _there_.

That Gentle Giant album "Three Friends" sounds like a pretty normal mundane story.

― Bulky Pee Pants (Tom D.), Sunday, January 14, 2024 8:59 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

it is about a gay ogre orgy

― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm)

six of one, half a dozen of the other